The Collected Stories

slept and dreamed that it was Yom Kippur. He stood in the synagogue yard along with a group of Jews who wore white robes and prayer shawls. Someone had locked the synagogue, but why? The rabbi lifted his eyes to the sky and instead of one moon he saw two, three, five. What was that? The moons seemed to rush toward one another. They became larger and more radiant. Lightning struck, thunder rolled, and the sky blazed in flames. The Jews emitted a howling lament: “Woe, Evil is prevailing!”
    Shaken, the rabbi awoke. The train had arrived in Warsaw. He had not been in Warsaw since his father—blessed be his memory—fell ill and went there to see Dr. Frankel a few months before his demise. Father and son had then traveled in a special carriage. Sextons and court members had accompanied them. A crowd of Hasidim had waited at the station. His father was led to the house of a rich follower on Twarda Street. In his living room Father interpreted the Torah. Now Nechemia walked along the platform carrying his own valise. Some of the passengers ran, others dragged their luggage. Porters shouted. A gendarme appeared with a sword on one side, a revolver on the other, his chest covered with medals, his square face red and fat. His tallowy eyes measured the rabbi with suspicion, hatred, and with something that reminded the rabbi of a predatory beast.
    The rabbi entered the city. Trolley cars clanged their bells, droshkies converged, the coachmen flicked their whips, the horses galloped over the cobblestones. There was a stench of pitch, refuse, and smoke. “This is the world?” the rabbi asked himself. “Here the Messiah is supposed to come?” He searched in his breast pocket for the scrap of paper bearing Simcha David’s address, but it had vanished. “Are the demons playing with me already?” The rabbi returned his hand to the pocket and withdrew the paper he had been searching for. Yes, a demon was mocking him. But if there is no God, how can there be an Evil Host? He stopped a passer-by and asked for directions to Simcha David’s street.
    The man gave them. “What a distance!” he said.
    IV

    Each time the rabbi asked how to reach Smotcha Street, where Simcha David lived, he was advised to take a trolley car or a droshky, but the trolley seemed too formidable and a droshky was too expensive. Besides, the driver might be a Gentile. The rabbi spoke no Polish. He stopped to rest every few minutes. He hadn’t eaten breakfast; still, he didn’t know whether or not he was hungry. His mouth watered and he felt a dryness in his throat. The smell of freshly baked rolls, bagels, boiled milk, and smoked herring drifted from the courtyards. He passed by stores that sold leather, hardware, dry-goods, and ready-made clothes. The salesmen vied for customers, tore at their sleeves, winking and interspersing their Yiddish with Polish. Saleswomen called out in a singsong, “Apples, pears, plums, potato kugel, hot peas and beans.” A wagon laden with kindling tried to pass through a narrow gate. A cart piled high with sacks of flour forced its way through another gate. A madman—barefoot, wearing a caftan with one sleeve missing and a torn cap—was being chased by a bevy of boys. They called taunts and threw pebbles at him.
    “Mother cooked a kitten,” a young boy sang out in a high-pitched voice. Blond sidelocks hung down from his octagonal cap.
    The rabbi proceeded to cross the street and was nearly run down by an express wagon drawn by two Belgian horses. Women wrung their hands and scolded him. A man with a dirty gray beard who carried a sack on his shoulders said, “You’ll have to recite a thanksgiving benediction this Saturday.”
    “So, thanksgiving.” The rabbi spoke to himself. “And what does he carry in the sack—his portion in Paradise?”
    He finally reached Smotcha Street. Someone pointed out the gate number to him. At the gate a girl was selling onion rolls. He entered a courtyard where children were playing tag around a huge, freshly tarred garbage receptacle. Nearby, a dyer dipped a red skirt in a kettle filled with black dye. In an open window a girl was airing a feather bed, beating it with a stick. The first people he asked knew nothing of Simcha David. Then one woman said, “He must live in the attic.”
    The rabbi was unaccustomed to so many steps. He had to stop to catch his breath. Refuse littered the stairway. Apartment doors stood ajar. A tailor was sewing on a machine. One flat contained a